Who Should Be Promoted?

Have your firm's managers been promoted based on technical proficiency and status, or was it because of their self-awareness and critical thinking? David shares why he sees so many poor managers in the creative firms he's worked with, and then lists what he looks for in great team leaders.

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Managing (Right) for the First Time by David C. Baker

Transcript

Blair Enns: David, before we started recording, I went looking for your book, Managing (right) for the First Time, and I couldn't find it.

David C. Baker: I think it's in the Library of Congress down in the base.

Blair: I couldn't find it. I used to have dozens of copies. In fact, I think you sold 5,000 and I have 4,000 of those copies.

David: Yes, this is really a great way to start.

Blair: No, but I remember reading that book when you wrote that. When did you publish that book?

David: Oh, a long time ago, maybe 12, 15 years ago. It's been rewritten right now.

Blair: Is it?

David: Yes, by Jonathan, somebody who's younger and more in touch with management. I don't like people so it doesn't make a lot of sense for me to write a book on management.

Blair: Is he getting his name on the bio? He had manages a lot of people or has managed a lot of people.

David: He used to, now he just manages me.

Blair: I think you have to explain who Jonathan is.

David: My oldest son who works with me.

Blair: So he's coming to work in the business. Has been for a while but taking a larger role.

David: Yes, a year and a half.

Blair: Managing (Right) for the First Time. I remember reading that book, I think you wrote this thing and it's like, "I got to read David stupid book on managing, I don't want to read a book on managing people." I remember reading it, thinking, "Holy shit, this is actually really good," Because, honestly, I thought, what are you going to add to the canon of books on managing people?

What really struck me about that book is, it was for the first time manager. You had some insights in there and I don't read all these books, so maybe they're in every book and you're not that bright. It really struck me that you had these insights about how and when to promote people and who made the best managers. We're going to talk about that today, our topic is, Who Should You Promote To a Management Position, but that book is over 10 years old, what's the impetus for this episode now?

David: I guess, maybe just hearing from multiple clients that I'm advising at the moment, their struggles with this where they hired somebody, it turned out to be the wrong choice. Now not only that they mess up but they cause some serious damage, I guess.

You can't undo certain things, or you ask somebody to take on a management role and they're going to say yes or no and you can't unask that question. It's very much like asking somebody to marry you, it's like you better be prepared for either answer because you're going to hear either answer.

If you don't want to hear the answer, don't ask the question. I keep hearing people who are promoting folks for the wrong reasons but then also, I feel like I'm just in the wind saying these things and I wonder, it's like, "Is the rest of the world crazy, or is it me?" The answer is that it's me. I just think we've really got a few things wrong on this management stuff. I just thought, "I haven't written about this in many, many years and it's just fresh in my mind."

This is the vegetable episode. We talk about sales and positioning and all that, and every once in a while we have to slide in one of these not because people want to hear it, but because they need to hear it. That's my early excuse, it's for you and me.

Blair: Nobody's listening but let's do this anyway, let's you and me eat the broccoli.

David: Yes.

Blair: Yes. Actually, I like broccoli. Where do you want to start with this?

David: Well, this may be the typical scenario, because I think if people hear themselves in this, they'll start to see it. It happens like this, your firm has grown pretty quickly, and often that quick growth, actually, is following some single client that's growing really quickly but whatever. You just wake up one day and you realize, "Oh, my goodness, look at all these people answering to me, this isn't working, that's not why I got into this business. I'm okay at management, but geez, we have this flat structure. There's 15 people answering to me so I need to fix that."

You decide, "Okay, I'm going to build a middle layer," and you think, "All right, well, where am I going to get that manager? I probably ought to just get somebody on the outside who's really experienced but what kind of signal is that going to send to my people? Maybe that's a better idea but I can't do that, I'm just going to have to promote somebody internally."

You give up on the idea of an outside experienced person. Then you look across your team and say, "All right, which of these people should I promote to management?" This will be somebody who answers to me and will take off my plate these other four or five people.

Now it gets really complicated because you're going to hurt some people's feelings. You're going to choose one person and you're not going to choose another three or four, who, if you ask them honestly, would not only be interested in being this person. They might actually think that they are qualified and using traditional standards, they might very well be qualified.

You decide to promote internally. Who are you going to promote internally? Here's where the rubber meets the road because the easy the default, what we normally do is we pick the person who is best at this job. If it's a group of coders or creatives, the most creative or the best writer or whatever that is, and we go to them because if we don't choose them, then we may lose our very best producer.

That seems even more painful than getting this wrong, and so we ask this person. They've never had aspirations for management. They put their head down. They are amazing at doing the work, and they are immediately flattered by this request.

Blair: That's exactly the Peter principle, isn't it? When you promote somebody past their ability?

David: Yes, because the ability to do fantastic work has no connection with the ability to be a great manager. We ask this person to do it, and they're flattered, and then they sit on the idea for a day or two and they start having doubts about what management means, because what they've done with 28% of their time is whine about the person that's been managing them. They think, "Oh God, I don't want to be on the other side of that equation."

These are all people that have been my peers until yesterday and now on Monday, they're going to answer to me. I'm not sure I want this, but I don't feel like I can say no. Plus there's more money, there's more prestige, there's more title. I get another step of my career path.

This moves forward, we're promoting the person who's the best doer, and now this person is thrust into management. Now they have to deal with these difficult people that were just their peers yesterday. They don't enjoy it. We don't train them. What do they do? They dive back in where they have gotten so many accolades all their lives on fantastic doing and they put off the managing, and, all of a sudden, the problems slowly crop up.

These folks that are used to answer to you now answer to this other person are dissuaded. They're unhappy. This is the problem with managing the wrong person. It's choosing the person who is the best technically. Now, I think there are many times when the person who is the best at something technically is the best manager, but there isn't any necessary connection there. That's the big point.

Blair: As you paint that scenario, I relive it various roles. I've seen it happen so many times. It's so common. You touched on this a little bit but what's behind the phenomenon here? Why do we do it this way? Why don't we bring in other people or think about this role of managing differently?

David: I think it stems from two things. One is that we think management is special.

Blair: Is it not, though?

David: I don't know. Everybody in the world disagrees with me. This is where I think, 'God, David, you're such an idiot. You really think most of the world is wrong on this point?" I kind of do, but I don't know. I'm just admitting that.

If you're going to get on my train, be ready to be lonely here. I don't think management is special. I don't think that managers automatically ought to make more money than other people. In fact, some of the very best managers out there routinely manage people on their team who make more money than they do and they are okay with that. That is definitely a minority position here.

That's the first issue, is thinking that management is special and worth more. I don't believe that. I think management is a job. It's not a more important job. It's a job. Also, the other problem that comes with this is the fact that we haven't uncoupled these two things. We think that a career path necessarily involves managing people. We don't normally carve out career paths that allow somebody to climb, make more money without taking on more management responsibility.

You see this very commonly in the creative field where somebody who would normally be next in line for creative director doesn't really want to manage people. Typically, you'd call them a design director which means they're really, really talented and they make a lot of money but they're not managing other people. You see this happen frequently but I think it needs to happen more. Do you think I'm crazy?

Blair: I don't think you're crazy, but I think one of the issues when it comes to the money side of it is there's this sense that the managers shouldn't earn less than the people that they manage. Now in a sales culture, especially high commission sales like you think of investment banking or other financial services and, well, just the larger world of sales where you've got large sales teams on highly leveraged compensation plans, it's actually fairly common for the top producers to earn often quite a bit more than sales managers.

There are some cultures, I'm talking about corporate cultures, where just the idea that you would manage somebody who earns less than you it's an offensive idea to that manager. As you point out, we have to acknowledge that these are separate skills and the best doers in a high ROI position like sales, I think it's easier to make that case that this all-star salesperson who has all of this freedom and is making things happen on their own, these lone wolf superstars, of course, the managers aren't going to get massive raises because the people they're managing are earning massive amounts of money.

I think that's fairly pervasive, this idea that managers should earn more than the people that they're managing. You're saying that's not the case, or it shouldn't be the case?

David: I think it is the case. I don't think it should be the case. You know what I think is the best example of this working the way I think it should work? Is in sports, professional sports, not college sports. When you think about what a manager makes compared to what the players make. There's probably some areas where this breaks down, but we can see how the power dynamics work, kind of.

Sometimes you have a lone superstar sports hero who decides what he or she is going to put up with, but generally, it works pretty well. The coach who's paid less than most of the players has the power, has the management ability. You see how many times an athlete, an amazing athlete, goes into sports management and sometimes they do really, really well, and sometimes they don't do well at all. It's like those skills are really different. Why are they different there and they're not different in a management environment?

Blair: We've got this environment where we have a lot of poor managers who are technically competent. We've taken the technical people, we've promoted them to managers, and they're not doing great. If that's not the best way to do this, to look within and to promote the most technically competent people, what should we be looking for in the characteristics of managers that we're either hiring or promoting?

David: To me, when you promote somebody internally to a management position, think of it as simply acknowledging publicly what's already true. They're already managing people because I think good managers, they just can't help it. Even if they don't have the title, they are managing other people, they're leading other people. You just see this activity and the title just simply flows from that activity.

The title you give them just simply makes real what's already happening. Another way to think of it is when you announce a promotion internally from somebody, there may be some people with hurt feelings, but there should be no surprises. This should be the reaction that people would have. Like, "Oh, yes, of course. Makes sense. That's exactly who I would've chosen."

Like, "I go to them when I need advice or if I'm not sure about a company policy and I want the other perspective, I'll go to that person. They listen carefully. They usually make me think they're fair. I'm not worried about what they say behind my back." It's like, "Yes." Management shouldn't surprise people and it should just be making official what flows from the activity in the first place. That's what I mean by that.

Blair: This idea that the title should flow from the activity and it should just be logical when you announce it, everybody should go, "Oh, yes, that makes sense." That was to me the most profound insight in reading your book, Managing (Right) for the First Time. The title is the acknowledgment of something that is already happening. It's a formalizing of the role that that person is playing.

I think a business owner is fortunate to be in a position, especially a small business owner where that's going on already. It's not always the case, but those are the promotions that make the most sense to me. That was a profound insight. This next one that you'll talk about has been a profound insight that I've had recently as well.

David: Whoever this manager is that you're promoting, they need to be comfortable making tough choices or having the tough conversations or managing conflict. However, I want to tell you, they can't be conflict-averse, and I see that from the other side of it.

One of the things that we do when we're working with a firm in a total business reset is that we will actually survey every employee and frequently in management environments that aren't as healthy as they could be, one of the biggest issues is the leader's time management. The people wish they were doing something else, and often that's new business.

It's almost always, we wish you would stay out of our details and focus on new business. Then the other is they're conflict-averse. Everybody knows what needs to happen and we think they do too, but they're not willing to do it. When we think about a better way to identify the best managers. One, the first thing we talk about is the title must flow from the activity. There's no surprises. They're already doing this or just making it official.

Second is, this person has a history of making tough choices. It doesn't even have to be a history at the firm. It could be something in their family, it could be some sort of political affiliation. It could be the kind of perspective they have about how we should treat a client in a particular thing. They see things clearly and they don't run away from it. They don't hide from some of those tough conversations.

Blair: You frame it as making tough choices. You point out that it really is tied to the ability to have the difficult conversations. To me, the older I get, the more I think about this issue. A couple of weeks ago I was having a meeting with some of the team. I'd had a senior team member push back on an issue. The way she handled it was like wasn't going to turn the other cheek, was feeling some emotions, and sat with it for a moment and then said, "Blair, we need to have a conversation."

I realized, "Okay, I was way out ahead of her or oversteps and bounds or something as I often do." I pointed out to the younger members of the team that that ability to push back on your superior and say, "Hey, we need to have a conversation about something you said or did." The longer your career goes on, whether you're promoted or not, is really going to be defined by your ability to do that, to have the difficult conversations.

I find that the higher you go and the bigger your business gets and the more people you manage, the more you get this pass-fail grade on these difficult conversations. Are you going to address this issue head-on with a client, with a team member, somebody above you, below you next to you, or are you going to just hope the issue goes away?

If you can build that muscle early in your career, that bodes well for you over the long term. You look at people who successfully manage a lot of people, if I had to point to one issue, it's the willingness to have those difficult conversations and the ability to have them before things get too emotional.

David: Yes, because effective principles have a bias towards action, which means that there are going to be more actions that might need to be unwound at somehow. We're recording this in early November. Last week we did an event and you're managing director Shannon was speaking and I was watching the audience. The thing that just drew people in so much was that she was modeling conversations, not just saying, "Here's how you need to handle this philosophically."

She was saying, "Oh, this is how I would word that." She was modeling, having those difficult conversations. I think that training is so useful because even if we're willing to have them, we don't know how to start difficult conversations. Once you get those started, the rest of it can flow. It's that start that's so difficult and your managers know-- [laughs] I'm just thinking about it. Your best managers are the ones who have known how to start those conversations with you just like your illustration a minute ago.

Blair: Yes. Shannon is so good at it because she has a lot of practice on having those conversations with me. "Blair, we need to talk." She called yesterday, my phone rings and I see it's her on my phone and I answer, "Am I in trouble because of something I posted on LinkedIn like 10 minutes earlier? This is about my LinkedIn post, isn't it? Do we need to have a conversation?"

David: Was it?

Blair: It was about the LinkedIn post, but she said she loved it. She was just giving me some congratulations.

David: You had this relief?

Blair: Yes. Sometimes I wonder who's managing who.

[laughter]

David: That's the way it should be. You should wonder who's managing who. The other thing you're looking for in a possible manager is somebody who is not always thinking short-term. They have to be aware of the short term. It has to play in. You can't just always think of the long term and not think about the implications of what'll happen if you make this decision.

These are people who can put the more urgent stuff in a bigger perspective and say, "Yes, no. If we do that, this will step us down this path." This is why I love decision science because you have to consider so many different variables, and a great manager thinks about the long-term.

Blair: I love the way you framed this balance short and long-term but with a preference for the long-term. You're not all long-term because as-- I forget which economist said this, "In the long run, we're all dead." You can't always be managing to the long term.

I think poor managers are constantly fixing short-term problems and passing on the opportunity to build capacity in their people over the long term. It's a great way to state it, a preference for the long term, but balancing short and long term.

David: One of the phrases that I love, it's-- I forget. I think it was some king in the Old Testament or something. I need to look it up, but I always think about this phrase, he said, 'Well, at least there will be peace in my time." [crosstalk] Oh, that's not what we're looking for here.

Blair: What's next on this list of attributes?

David: They communicate well enough. I don't think a manager has to be super articulate, but the people that are listening to them cannot be confused about the essential message and the level of emotion wrapped in it, and you can see how that could come across from somebody who hasn't had a lot of formal education. I don't think any of that matters, but they need to be able to communicate passion and mission sufficiently.

Some people who would otherwise be fantastic leaders simply can't do that. I think they're really going to struggle. I think that's something that you would look for. Then last thing you'd look for is somebody who is, God, not perfect, but self-aware.

They understand their own tendencies and how their own issues can cloud their judgment and how they perceive others and so on and so they can counter it. We're not looking for people who are perfectly balanced. We're looking for people who understand where they are imbalanced, so they can filter that out as they make decisions.

Blair: That's great. None of these characteristics have anything to do with technical proficiency. How competent technically do managers need to be? Can they be outright technically ignorant?

David: I don't think so. Often, they have some background and historical work performance in this technical space. They need to be technical enough to know who to hire to identify people that are smarter than them in this technical area and that's quite possible. They need to understand the issues and manage around them.

Actually, one of the reasons you don't want the manager to be the most technically capable person is because they aren't going to have the same temptation to step in and fix things all the time. Some of the very best creative directors, for instance, in fact, it's really hard to find one who isn't. They come from a copy background and they do not step in to solve the design or the branding issues because they can't. That forces them to manage and bring other people in the team into the spotlight.

Blair: A little bit of technical competence, enough to be able to spot it in others, but not so much that you think, "Oh, well, I'm the person who's going to come in and save this." I see a similar pattern in salespeople, too. I sometimes think too much domain expertise gets in the way.

If I could remove some of that from some of my clients, then they would more readily default to the frameworks and not get distracted by the actual problem, not get too enamored with and distracted by the problem. You've got a big long list here of what you look for in a leader. There are a lot of things in this list and we've only got a couple minutes left. Do you want to run through these?

David: Yes, and this list changes every day. Depends on the mood I'm in and who's just pissed me off and who I love and--

Blair: Recency bias?

David: Yes, but I'm looking for people who are approachable, articulate, authentic, communicative, competent, at least at the basic level, confident enough anyway. They're contrary in the sense that they're willing to test things and not just take everything at face value. They're curious, they're decision-makers, they're direct, they're disciplined, they're fair, they're grateful, honest, hopeful, merciful. They understand their own failures.

I actually want a manager who has really screwed up at some point. I just think that makes them so much more humble. They're pattern matchers. In other words, critical thinkers. They're predictable, usually predictable, purposeful, self-aware, visionary. There's so many things we could add. Maybe some of these aren't that important.

Then one last note, if you're listening to this and you're a great manager, but your day is consumed not in managing people, but protecting the people you manage from your boss and there are people in that role, you probably ought to just leave. That's the signal.

If you're a really good manager, but you're spending most of your time protecting your people from your boss, then it's probably time to leave. You just need to move on and there's a lot of that happening as well, where it's just the reverse. Where the manager is a great choice, but the person managing the manager is an asshole. That's something we need to be aware of, too.

Blair: I have been in that role where my job was to protect my people from my boss. It is not an enviable position to be in. You listed an alphabetical list of 26 words, pick one or two on that list that you think you would prioritize.

David: Oh, probably decision maker. I think a lot of wrong happens by people making no decision rather than the wrong decision, and probably honest, I think, honest and grateful. Those three, maybe. I'm not sure. Ask me tomorrow, might be different.

Blair: All right. We've been talking about who should you promote to a management position. The big takeaway is it's not about technical competence necessarily. We didn't even talk about the issue of bringing in outside managers, but maybe that is a topic for another day.

David: Yes.

Blair: Thanks, David.

David: Thanks, Blair.